


nightlight

by powerandpathos



Category: 19天 - Old先 | 19 Days - Old Xian
Genre: M/M, Prompt Fic, Sleepovers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-11
Updated: 2017-07-11
Packaged: 2018-12-01 00:34:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,747
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11474883
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/powerandpathos/pseuds/powerandpathos
Summary: An impromptu sleepover fic based on a Tumblr ask.





	nightlight

**Author's Note:**

> [originally posted here](http://thefearofthetruth.tumblr.com/post/162668855019/mini-fic-nightlight)
> 
> **based on this ask:** iLOVE spontaneous sleepovers pls imagine he tian sleeping over at the very reluctant mo them needing to share his single bed which was def not made for two teenage boy with all their sharp edges and he tian’s plus added height, his feet dangling off the bed unless he folds himself a little. mo sleeps by the wall bc thats HIS SPOT MOVE OVER U FUCK, someone wakes up thirsty during the night and they have to maneuver out of bed without waking the other up. still the best sleep they had in years

Guan Shan says, ‘What the fuck do you think you’re doing?’

The bed dips beneath He Tian’s weight as he settles himself. Guan Shan stares at him over his shoulder.

He Tian says, ‘The last time I slept on some kind of futon, I was eight. I’m pretty sure I don’t want to sleep on one again.’

‘I don’t give a fu— _Hey!_ ’ Guan Shan cries.

There’s an arm like a second rib cage around him, a steel band of warm skin and flesh, and Guan Shan can hear the thud of his pulse in his ears. They’re close enough that he thinks He Tian will hear it. Feel it?

Guan Shan breathes out through his nose. ‘Get. The fuck.  _Off_ me.’

‘It’s more comfortable like this,’ He Tian says easily. ‘Your bed’s too small.’

‘Yeah, no shit,’ Guan Shan spits.

It’s late, mid-August heat curling outside the balcony door. Too hot in Guan Shan’s cramped room for He Tian’s bullshit. It’s the thirteenth time He Tian has been to Guan Shan’s home, each time uninvited. It’s the third time he’s stayed. The first he’s done this.

Guan Shan should have seen it coming.

He’s fallen asleep twice to the sound of He Tian’s slow breathing from the bed while Guan Shan took the floor. He’s known each time that He Tian was awake, a dark gaze staring in the hush of Guan Shan’s bedroom. Woken up twice to the expectation that He Tian would be  _there_ —too close, too near, too much. Instead there’d been an empty room and the scrawl of a handwritten note. A bed made. Unslept in.

_See you later. Thank your mom for the food._

And Guan Shan, when night started to fall again, while they threw a basketball on the court between their homes, would glance at the purpled bags under He Tian’s eyes and the sweat on the back of his neck and the ground out cigarette ends.

 _Did you even sleep?_ he’d think. Wouldn’t ask. Getting answers to questions wasn’t how they worked. Silences and darting glances, instead, had to fill the gaps.

In the dark, Guan Shan can hear the humour in He Tian’s voice. He can picture that slow smile gleaming through the grey haze of light, the lazy edge to it. An unhurried, entitled arrogance to it that Guan Shan feels under his skin.

‘You’re not supposed to be rude to your guests,’ He Tian says.

‘Rude,’ Guan Shan says flatly. ‘And fuck off. I’m not your host, you chicken dick.’

He knows now that if he thrashed, tried to throw He Tian off, he’d end up in a choke hold or his face pressed into the sheets. He’s not an idiot—he can’t afford to be with someone like He Tian. Every move’s calculated. Every set of words is carefully chosen. Except when they’re not.

‘You’re bed’s too small,’ says He Tian again, with that same amused, indignant tone he’d used when Guan Shan threw at him a pair of pyjama bottoms and they fell, comically, just short of his ankles. ‘My feet are hanging off the edge.’

‘Don’t think that’s my problem, is it?’ Guan Shan retorts, too aware of how He Tian’s curved around his back to make himself smaller. ‘Cause this is  _my bed_. For  _me. Just for me._ ’

A huff of laughter that rings like a dismissal, and then He Tian’s shifting and—

Guan Shan freezes. There’s a second of silence. Blood rushes to his face.

‘Is that—Are you  _fucking—’_

‘Sorry,’ says He Tian breezily, the lie slipping like liquid gold. ‘Natural reaction. Teenage boy.’

‘Fuck— _enough_ ,’ says Guan Shan, feeling his heart skitter, feeling closed-in and panicked. Something’s tightening around his lungs and if he moves too much he’ll feel He Tian’s— ‘I’m not—this is—I’m not  _like_ —’

‘Like me?’ says He Tian.

And something’s changed. Guan Shan recognises that voice; it matches the expression from before. Summer heat bearing down on a basketball court, and a patch of shade under the awning. He Tian’s little act of thievery, a small outrage like a cigarette burn, and then the onslaught. The bigger theft: a bruise pressed onto his mouth.

_Do I disgust you that much?_

Guan Shan’d thrown out a confirmation at the time, and the look he’d gotten back… He wonders how the slope of a mouth and a flat stare from eyes like oil spills can now be put into sound.

Something darkly wry presses at him: if anyone could do it, it would be He Tian.

Guan Shan says, quiet, ‘No one’s like you.’

There must be a peace offering in what he says, because the arm loosens and withdraws. Space creates itself between them.

There’s still no denying He Tian’s presence; even now there’s a warmth that seeps from him that Guan Shan can feel at his back. He can still smell the char of tobacco and his shampoo in He Tian’s hair. It smells different on him.

He Tian starts to move, and there’s a momentary tangle of limbs while he detracts himself, ankles knocking against Guan Shan’s, the press of a sharp knee against Guan Shan’s thigh, all angles, the bed dipping. Guan Shan rolls onto his back, and as He Tian sits up, Guan Shan’s keenly reminded how  _big_ He Tian is. How much space he takes up. How large his shadow falls. Imposing even when he doesn’t mean to be.

‘What’re you doing?’ Guan Shan says.

‘What do you think?’ He Tian mutters, slipping to his feet.

Guan Shan pushes up on his elbows, watches He Tian move about in the darkness of the room to gather his things.

His chest pangs strangely, eyes following He Tian as he shoulders his bag, yanks his phone from the charger plugged into the wall. The screen glows for a handful of seconds, and it’s enough to catch the harsh lines of He Tian’s face that Guan Shan can admit still make him beautiful. It’s enough to still see that same slope, that same flatness around the eyes. It’s not wounded enough to be rejection, but it’s close.

Guan Shan breathes out slow. ‘Look, you can sleep here,’ he says quietly. ‘It’s fine, all right?’

It’s like He Tian doesn’t hear him for a second; his fingers are still wandering over the surface of Guan Shan’s desk for the carton of cigarettes he’d tossed there earlier, a handful of crisp notes and loose change. He pulls off the hoody from the back of the desk chair.

But then he stops.

He stands there, the silence heated and too thick to fall asleep in. Shrouded in the not-quite-dark, Guan Shan looks at him as something to be afraid of.

‘You’re right,’ He Tian says eventually, clear and sure enough that Guan Shan stares. ‘I shouldn’t have done that. I was being an asshole. Sorry.’ He pulls the bag back firmly on his shoulder from where it’s slipped. ‘You know, I’ve always thought the same about you.’

‘Thought what?’

A loose lift of He Tian’s shoulders. The lazy curve of a smile starting to burgeon. ‘There’s no one like you, either.’

Guan Shan’s breathing turns shallow.

His room has always felt small to him, a little difficult to breathe in, a little too much pressure on his bones while he tried to grow. Failed to grow. Failed again. It gets cluttered too easily and dust settles even easier, and there’s a certain temporariness that he’s never been able to shake in the unread books, unworn clothes—fragments of interests gained and lost.

But when He Tian talks, there’s a shifting. A slight expansion that makes the room fit them both, a set of lungs letting out a held breath, a new familiarity to everything he’s always known.

And it fits well.

‘You should stay,’ Guan Shan says lowly. ‘It’s late.’

Wryly, ‘I’m sure I’ll be—’

‘Are you gonna make me say it again?’

He Tian looks at Guan Shan evenly. He could say yes. He could say he wasn’t that cruel. Instead he lets the bag fall from his shoulder and onto the floor with a muffled thud, and starts emptying his pockets again.

It’s a sort of undressing that makes Guan Shan want to avert his eyes. A strange ritual motion that leaves them both staring at each other in the darkness. When He Tian moves back to the bed, Guan Shan swallows instinctively.

He edges closer to the wall to make space.

There’s something undeniable about it this time: He Tian isn’t catching him unawares. He’s right where Guan Shan can see him. He’s not an unasked-for storm of young muscle and too-long limbs that Guan Shan couldn’t defend himself against. Knowingly, now, Guan Shan offers no defence.

When they’re settled, and on their sides, and their faces are close enough to touch, it seems impossibly bearable. Guan Shan should hate this. He finds himself measuring his breathing in time with He Tian’s. Ignores when He Tian looks at his lips.

He Tian starts to bring a hand towards Guan Shan’s face.

‘No touching!’ Guan Shan spits, smacking the hand away.

‘Fuck, you’re prissy,’ He Tian laughs. But he pulls away. ‘Doesn’t suit you.’

Guan Shan ignores that. ‘If you take all the sheets, I swear to fuck—’

He Tian snorts. ‘It’s hot as fuck anyway. Have them all to yourself.’

‘ _I will._ ’

Guan Shan scowls at He Tian’s smile, his heavy-lidded gaze. There are no more words, and silence ticks on—and He Tian closes his eyes first.

Guan Shan doesn’t trust this easiness, the way He Tian’s let his guard down so easily, but the night’s too warm for anything else. A sticky humidity that layers like irritation on Guan Shan’s mood.

Tiredness pulls at him. He needs a piss but he’s not getting up again. He knows he’ll wake up five more times, shaken by He Tian’s shifting in his sleep—if he sleeps at all. He knows He Tian will probably get up in the night for a drink. For a smoke. For three.

But he doesn’t care as he feels himself start to drift, a fishhook tug behind his eyes; he’s aware of the slowness of his breath, a close warmth pushing him over the edge.

It’s only in the morning, when they’re all limbs and elbows and the pulse in He Tian’s neck is sure against Guan Shan’s ear, that he realises he didn’t wake up once.

**Author's Note:**

> please leave kudos/comments/[share the original tumblr post!](http://thefearofthetruth.tumblr.com/post/162668855019/mini-fic-nightlight)


End file.
